The Most Stressful Science Problem

Last week Forbes Magazine listed university professor as one of the top 10 least-stressful jobs. Academics, particularly scientists, were indignant and flooded Forbes with stories asserting stress levels that induce Einstein hair in a world that doesn’t appreciate their work. There are two sides to science: the deadlines, constant searches for funds, and long hours countered by the pure joys of inquiry and discovery.

The Forbes article and ensuing one-upmanship reveals a gulf between those in academia and the rest of the human population; and the gulf reveals a serious problem with science. Fortunately, there is a stress-free remedy.

The human race faces many big problems and decisions – over-population, climate change, emerging diseases, mountain-top removal, great garbage patches in the ocean, and other urgent, contested issues. There are two interlocking keys needed to solve these big problems: (i) reliable knowledge of what can be done and (ii) social capital to make it happen. (The social networks, cohesion, and individual investment in community that makes democracy work better are social capital). Right now these two keys are separated from each other. The scientific enterprise is not broken per se (it is still making reliable knowledge), but it can’t efficiently do its part in solving problems while located apart from society, so far apart that Forbes thinks it plausible that academics don’t work during unpaid summers.

Thus, the problem with science is simply where it is situated. Science is positioned as a profession in the ivory tower, in labs and universities on the periphery of society, with its own norms and culture, out of reach to most. Even though curiosity is a universal human trait, the enterprise of scientific discovery is cordoned off from most people, outside our culture, not a part of our collective identity, not integrated into our rituals and customs. It is carried out by an elite few, making it an easy target for attacks on its credibility and requiring specialized communicators to bridge the enormous gap between those creating knowledge and those for whom the knowledge is created.

Since the problem is location, the solution is relocation. We need to relocate science from its isolation and foster its growth in the mainstream of society as an ongoing authentic collaboration between the public and professionals. How can we possibly do this?

A particular style of science, called citizen science, has already begun to do it, every day.

Also, credit goes to traditional ecological (indigenous) knowledge. We know the extracts from Madagascar periwinkle can treat diabetes because drug companies save time and money by using indigenous knowledge to narrow their search for medicines. Traditional ecological knowledge is often misunderstood, romanticized or belittled, when it is simply locally reliable knowledge produced slowly (over millennia) under the direction of shared cultural values.

Despite being the forbearer of professional science and experiencing a recent surge with the aid of information and communication technologies, citizen science is still in its infancy. From it we learn to coordinate massive collaborations that accumulate input from more people than ever before. If we grow its potential, we have an opportunity to develop systems of engagement and participation aimed at collective problem-solving.

I work at one hub of citizen science, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Leave the Einstein hair to me and bring science out to you through the doors opened by citizen science. The sooner we learn to co-create knowledge, the better our chance to pull humanity through the complex challenges we face to create an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable society.

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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